Abe Forsythe shape shifts for more Wolf Like Me

Family life has decreed that writer / director / actor Abe Forsythe has had to shape his creativity, leading to works such as Stan series Wolf Like Me.

The Isla Fisher and Josh Gad series, in which a deep dark secret is revealed in season one (‘spoiler ahead’ if you haven’t seen it) is returning for its second season.

Yet as Forsythe tells TV Tonight not being able to readily leave Australia has resulted in unique projects.

“I can’t leave the country easily, because my son is here…,” he began.

“My son has some health conditions, which makes it really difficult for him to travel overseas.

“I’ve had the opportunity to work internationally a number of times but I haven’t been able to because I don’t want to have to leave my son in this country. So I’ve been trying to find ways of making stories that can connect with an international audience.

“I was more interested in actually showing Australia to an overseas audience”

“So far, I’ve only made things that are set here. But obviously, with our talent base, our locations, we can set anything in the world and film it in Australia. I was more interested in actually showing Australia to an overseas audience, but also finding a way into the story they can to relate to as well.”

Wolf Like Me returns to Adelaide after a collison -literally- saw Mary (Isla Fisher) and Gary (Josh Gad) thrown together, despite Mary’s deep secret: she has werewolf tendencies.

As Forsythe explains it, the character of Mary had been bitten as a child in Prague, a nod to werewolf mythlogies in Eastern Europe. The series even contains tributes to American Werewolf in London.

“She’d eaten her husband in Europe and then travelled back home, but was needing to skip town, so she went to where she thought no-one would ever find her. She ended up in Adelaide,” he explains.

“I love Adelaide. I find it a really fascinating city and visually really beautiful with some interesting, unusual elements to it. So it felt totally like the right place to set the story.”

The series also follows from a 2019 film, Little Monsters, a post-apocalyptic musical action comedy horror, which also featured Gad. And zombies.

“I didn’t want to make a zombie movie and I didn’t want to make a show with a werewolf,” he insists. “It just so happened that they are the best avenues for me to explore these other ideas and give the audience the opportunity to see how they relate to the material. To give them a safe space to explore things that might be going on in their own lives.

“It’s a very specific metaphor for things that were going on in my life”

“For me it’s a very specific metaphor for things that were going on in my life. But part of the joy of making this show, and hearing from people who have seen it, is that it represents a whole lot of things, to a lot of different people.”

Last season the full realisation of the wolf did not occur until the final episode.

“I was trying to find a way that I could speak to peoples’ experiences and have their own cathartic reaction to what happens with these characters in the show. So that’s why I held off.

“I wanted people, in a way, to actually forget that the werewolf is such an important element. So when it did show up in the last episode, people were like ‘Oh my god, I actually don’t want to see the werewolf now! I’m so attached to these characters and the danger that it represents.'”

Forsythe, son of actor Drew Forsythe, now says Season Two has much to explore.

“Isla’s character of Mary has been one of the most satisfying characters to conceive. And after meeting Isla she really plays into her strengths as well.

“It kicks off with her six months pregnant at the beginning of the show. So they’re well and truly on the way and that obviously creates a lot of anxiety with Isla’s character.

“There were a lot of very practical things now that this metaphor has revealed itself. How do you start a blended family? How do you prepare for a baby, when you don’t know if that baby’s going to be human or wolf?

“A lot more danger”

“The conflict of Mary having to step out into the real world…just brings up a lot more danger of being found it. So it was one of the easiest, if not the easiest, experience I’ve ever had writing something. All this inbuilt conflict that had been set up in the first season just started paying off in spades as we were working on it.

“Part of the joy of casting Isla and Josh in these roles is they are primarily known for comedy. But I wanted to take two actors that are known for that and subvert the expectations of the kind of movie they would normally be seen in together, and make them play it straight. Ground them and also give them the opportunity to play what they’re really, really good at, which is vulnerability.

“They’re very adept, dramatic actors.”

The cast also includes Édgar Ramírez (The Bourne Ultimatum, Dr. Death), Ariel Donoghue (Blueback), Emma Lung (Wonderland), Anthony Taufa (Young Rock), and Honour Latukefu.

“I pitched it as a three season arc”

The show is also co-commissioned by Peacock in the USA, which has timed the second season to premiere ahead of Halloween.

“I pitched it as a three season arc. I saw very specific things for each season. But I also knew there’s all sorts of reasons why shows don’t get picked up for a second season. So the last episode of season one, could have been the ending to the character’s story,” he continues.

“If that’s where it ended, for me, as an audience member, I would have been very satisfied with that. Season Two doesn’t necessarily end in the same way.”

“Season Two is going to satisfy them even more.”

But he does hint viewers should expect the unexpected with the second season.

“Season Two is going to satisfy them even more. It’s the first experience in my life where I’ve had the opportunity to continue with story. To take all of the things that worked, and push them further. And at the same time, subvert some other things to make it more of a surprise. And then to trust that the audience won’t be able to spot these surprises,” he explains.

“There’s some big, tonally interesting things that Season Two does, which still fits within the world of the show.

“I don’t want to give anything away but there’s something that happens at the end of episode four, which was the thing that made me go, ‘If I can pull that off from a technical point of view, that’s the whole reason to make this show.’ Because I’ve never seen anything like that before.

“It’s simultaneously, I think, the funniest and most shocking thing that I’ve ever had the ability to create.”

Wolf Like Me S2 premieres Thursday October 19 on Stan.